DIY Tap Handle?

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Hello all, I made my first tap handle last night and was surprised at how easy it was. Now I have a few different options for the front, I can use chalkboard paint, dry erase, or you can put a sticker/label on it. I've decided to make a few more for friends and wanted to say that if anyone here wanted one just PM me.

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Dan
 
amazing size difference in people's hip joints, no?

(left and right taps are femur heads? or is the one on right humerus? - making the left a very small femur replacement.)
 
im missing the one on the left (the bog ball was no where to be found)...the piece was not there.. they are both femurs.. yes everyone is a different size..
 
this thread is so cool, I got inspired. I gave my 2 boys a lesson in eminent domain and used a few of their toys for new handles. only 1 protest, and he gave me an alternate shark to use. then I used a shifter knob from a transmission I had in the back yard.

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Latest addition! Things are huge, keep thinking I'm gonna walk into the laundry room to find beer all over the floor with the faucets open.

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The ends were just tucked in. It was just a fun dick move to mess with a buddy's rope. He had to untie it the next time he went climbing. I wasn't gonna do anything to it like glue them in place or sew them together.
 
The SWMBO made me these for my birthday. Bought the handles from Rogue and then painted on the chalkboard.

They're pretty slick! she did a great job

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I made a few more handles tonight with different size faces. The local homebrew store wants to carry them so I need to make a few more. I'm hoping that ill be able to fund my hobby with what I make from them.

Here are a few pics of the ones I worked on tonight.

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Took this idea from TonySwank. I make the piranha plant out of sculpey, and painted with acrylic. Pipe is pvc and half of a coupler painted with green enamel. Enamel was hardened on pvc in oven at 180 for about 2 hours.

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Took this idea from TonySwank. I make the piranha plant out of sculpey, and painted with acrylic. Pipe is pvc and half of a coupler painted with green enamel. Enamel was hardened on pvc in oven at 180 for about 2 hours.

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That looks great! I work with PVC a lot, and it's nowhere near that clean! Did the paint tell you to bake it in the oven or was that your idea?
 
Real 30mm shell plus a hand turned replica projectile from some guy on eBay. I just drilled out the spent primer and used the angled bonnet adapter from Midwest to attach it. Now my wife says I need more tap handles to match. Dam....

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With one of these:
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and an drill you can make anything into a tap handle (well, not anything, meat wouldn't work, or a cat, but lots of things).

I'm just using oak, though.

So, what exactly is the fitting in the picture called? I'd like to make my own too, but need to know what it is called. Is this something I can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes?
 
Sparqui said:
So, what exactly is the fitting in the picture called? I'd like to make my own too, but need to know what it is called. Is this something I can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes?

I found these at harbor freight for cheap.
 
So, what exactly is the fitting in the picture called? I'd like to make my own too, but need to know what it is called. Is this something I can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes?

If you place your cursor over the picture, most of the times it'll give you the name. In this case, it's a "tap handle insert".
 
Did the paint tell you to bake it in the oven or was that your idea?

I have had a fair bit of experience with having enamel paints not harden. For some reason on soft plastics, mainly vinyls, rattle can enamel paints never fully cure and will remain tacky forever. I painted some wii-motes that have been tacky for a couple years. So I just used the oven to force cure the paint and drive off any remaining solvents. I set the oven just below the melting temp of pvc. It melts about 210 for the softer varieties, and higher depending on its polymer. The hardware store pipe gets soft at about 180 so don't squeeze it once its hot (I did.) After about 2 hours I pulled it out, let it cool, and the paint was rock hard.
 
It's called a "Wood Insert Nut."

I picked up some of those wood insert nuts, the hammer in variety, from home depot. They didn't have anything else in 3/8ths. It didn't fit on my taps! I even ran it through a 3/8"-16 die and I got no joy. What DID fit was a metric 10-1.5 nut, which is off by just a few thousandths of an inch from what 3/8's is so it fit snug as a bug. I put that in the base with bondo, something so annoying I recommend no one to try.
 
I picked up some of those wood insert nuts, the hammer in variety, from home depot. They didn't have anything else in 3/8ths. It didn't fit on my taps! I even ran it through a 3/8"-16 die and I got no joy. What DID fit was a metric 10-1.5 nut, which is off by just a few thousandths of an inch from what 3/8's is so it fit snug as a bug. I put that in the base with bondo, something so annoying I recommend no one to try.

Then if you have the dies, why did you buy the inserts in the first place?:confused:
You could've used the dies with some tubing, and gotten the same results, if not better...
 
Then if you have the dies, why did you buy the inserts in the first place?:confused:
You could've used the dies with some tubing, and gotten the same results, if not better...

I was already at the depot getting plastic, they were 99 cents. I would rather spend 1 dollar than 20 minutes drilling and tapping something.
 
these are cool I did a cam and a piston out of a air cooled VW engine but they where to heavy and caused my taps to leak
 
Arkham razors,

Those look awesome!! Where did you get the monsters from? I would love to make something like that for my Halloween party!
 
I had the same idea with the rouge handle
but instead of blackboard paint. I used a router. and inset a piece of slate in it.
I like the rustic look of the slate but, some times its harder to write with the chalk to make it readable.
 
My daughter gave a boxed set of DVD's a few years ago containing the three "monster" movies from old hollywood. The set contained the monster busts on small pedestals. I removed the bases, and rigged the taps from them. They were surprisingly high quality busts considering the price of the DVD's. Not sure where you can find them these days.
 
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